


Tether and Timbre

by ContrivedChaos



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Asexual Character, Awkward Sexual Situations, F/F, Fluff and Smut, HtN spoilers, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Sex, More talking than smut, POV Gideon Nav, Porn with Feelings, Post-HtN, Talking, Vaginal Fingering, lots of talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 18:08:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30076257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ContrivedChaos/pseuds/ContrivedChaos
Summary: Under the circumstances, Reverend Daughter, how could you ever have been expected to do something as basic as unclench your jaw? Unhang your dark robes from the stiff hangers you call shoulders? Lighten your self-imposed load and look at something other than the dry, charcoaled earth in penance? Something, or someone, like me, for a change?Harrowhark Nonagesimus, my diminutive dynast, how could you be expected to raise your ethereal pools for even a second to look at me when I’m trying to jump your bones?Figuratively speaking.Or: Back in their own bodies, Harrow is still learning about this intimacy thing. Gideon is helping her. And Gideon is helping herself while she's at it.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 15
Kudos: 53





	Tether and Timbre

**Author's Note:**

> First-time writer for this fandom. Please be kind.
> 
> This story can take place post-HTN, post-perfect Lyctorhood, in a parallel dimension, or wherever else these girls can find happiness.
> 
> (Just let them be happy, Muir).

To your credit, my midnight monarch, you have never been a scion of succor. For our entire lives, you carried yourself under the air of the Great Aunts, the potentates, the procumbrent Ninth, with their prayer bones shoved so far up their ass cracks they threatened to become fused with their spines.

Under the circumstances, Reverend Daughter, how could you ever have been expected to do something as basic as unclench your jaw? Unhang your dark robes from the stiff hangers you call shoulders? Lighten your self-imposed load and look at something other than the dry, charcoaled earth in penance? Something, or someone, like me, for a change?

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, my diminutive dynast, how could you be expected to raise your ethereal pools for even a second to look at me when I’m trying to jump your bones?

Figuratively speaking.

Our dynamic has always been like this, hasn’t it? We are acts of deliberate evil. We are war crimes. We are two dipoles of the same magnetic field, forced to come together in an unholy experiment, on a planet that could not be bothered to raise us with any sense of dignity or maternal flavor.

While I whiled away the hours with my two hander and skin mags, and occasionally enjoyed the affections of Crux threatening to throw me down a drill shaft, you spent a lifetime touch starved and attention harvested by your real parents who, let’s be real, offed themselves long before you were even conceived.

So when I tell you, my autocratic cryptid, I get it, believe me, I GET it.

Still, when things are starting to get hot and heavy between us…when you are so engulfed in an idea that I can hear the little gears turning in your head. When you feel me looking at you and reach over to plant a cool palm on my bicep. When you drop what you’re doing and pull me closer to give a taste of the worry on your lips. When your hands start blazing trails under my clothes and I return a hot gasp into your mouth and my own hands start to wander.

When I try to bring your eyes to mine, you swallow heavily and stiffen up. When my touch travels anywhere north of your sternum or south of your hips, you pull away. Your body either curlicues in like a snail shell defensively, or you start to rub one out on me harder to distract me.

You cannot call me an ungrateful lover. Being loved by you is like trying to find the calm place between a house fire and a supernova.

But loving you is an experience I have yet to uncover, and it’s killing me far more efficiently than falling on a fence ever could.

You tell me it has nothing to do with me. And I believe you, because how can I not? You tried to give me your body. You would rather have holed yourself away in a pocket dimension than live in a universe without me in it, you said. Which was very sexy of you, mind, but not at all productive. Nothing like this ever happens in the magazines.

But if it’s not me, then why do you lock yourself up tight like the wards and spells that sealed the tomb for a myriad? Then why do you fuck me so thoroughly, so flawlessly, like I’m putty in your hand, like I’m the next big project you need to work out, to do evil little things to, to wrench open with supernatural forces like you did the tomb? As if you haven’t undone me enough already, by giving me your literal meat and bones.

It’s during one of those times that we’re in bed, physically wasted and showered after hours sparring with Camilla in the training room (I got you to build at least one muscle, like I promised) that I get an answer. You’re reading some Blood of Eden manuscript, one of thousands you’ve clocked away in that magnificent cranial orifice of yours, and my body is wrapped around you like a pretzel. My nose predictably starts to work patterns into your neck and shoulder, sending a noticeable chill down your spine and a barely audible gasp into the room from your mouth.

I figure we'll just have one of our legendary makeout sessions. One for the history books. We learned quickly we are exceptionally decent at sucking face. But you have other, sexier ideas at this moment, which I cannot say I will ever be opposed to.

You toss your manuscript to the wayside (you probably have it memorized, anyway) and press yourself into me, hard. The room is dark, but I can still make out your features, because neither of us needed much light to see by on the Ninth. You wrestle with the bottom of my tank top, digging it out of my shorts and dragging it up until it’s bunched under my chin. Then you begin your worship of me, like I am actually worthy of dear old Dad’s title of _God_.

“Griddle…”

I may never get used to you saying my nickname with such reverence. Especially not when you follow it up with taking my nipple into your mouth, laving it gently all over with your talented tongue, while your hand plays with my other breast. The sounds coming out of me are unbecoming of a cavalier, but that only seems to spurn your advances forward.

“Griddle…my Griddle. You are a wonder.”

 _Your Griddle_.

“Fuck, Harrow!” I gasp as the sound of your declaration almost sends me over the edge. I maneuver you by your scruff and bring your face up to mine, to absorb the rest of your silent worship into my mouth as your other hand makes its way into my briefs.

What your digits lack in size, they make up for in skill and dexterity. You don’t touch me directly at first, you never do. You dance around my center like you’re casting one of your creepy little necromantic spells, and it only drags out the torture longer, until I’m whining under you like the petulant child I probably am.

You’ve always been good at that. Torturing me, that is. Denying me what I want, making me think I’m going to get it, putting my target in sight, and then pulling it away at the last minute.

Thankfully, you are merciful this time, and you finally, _finally_ swirl your fingers around my clit until my hips launch off the bed like a rocket. You absorb my cries into your mouth, soothing me with your tongue up top and your hand down below. Two of those fingers, those terrible, wonderful fingers, slide inside me so smoothly. There’s no resistance. None. How could there be, after you have made me so carefully, unwound me so completely. Who’s worshipping who, again?

You add a third finger. The end comes ridiculously fast. And in my blissful stupor, that’s when I make a mistake.

My body is so much larger than yours, Harrow, yet I cling to you, tethered like you are my lifeline against falling through the River. My hands aren’t thinking when I drag you along in the current, bathing your neck in the remnant of my moans and heavy breaths. I pull your lower body down, until my muscular thigh is between your twiggy ones, and my hands move to your smallish ass. An ass I’ve never touched until now.

It feels so good, Harrow. I grind you down onto my thigh, and squeeze your rear through your sleep pants, and you gasp/whine into my ear, in a way you’ve never done before. You’ve moved a galaxy with the sound you’ve exhaled, and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt, ever heard, in my mostly meaningless life.

But by the time I realize what I’ve done, you’ve gone still. Your body becomes comically solid and immobile above me, and in my panic I remove myself from under you before you curl in on yourself again.

“Harrow! Sorry…I’m so sorry!” I shout, my hands flying upright to either side of my head in an exaggerated gesture of _I surrender_.

I’m not sure if I expect you to feel angry, betrayed, or what, but you are calm. Stoic to a fault. You take a minute to collect yourself, deep breaths fanning out your tiny ribs as you will your heartbeat back under your control.

You don’t shout or raise your voice at me like you would back on the Ninth. I’m not sure whether to be concerned or relieved about that.

“It’s okay, Gideon.” You say my name this time. We’re still on a first name basis, at least.

“No, it’s not,” I say matter-of-factly, still trying to rein in my arousal from earlier. “I shouldn’t have initiated that…done that to you. I’m so sorry.”

“I promise, it’s fine,” you say unconvincingly.

“But, Harrow…”

“Nav…”

Fuck, I ruined it, again.

I don't know what to say. What to do. Where to put my hands, or whether I should put them anywhere. So I stand there, like a dumb fuck, rubbing one hand through my hair frustratedly and straightening my disheveled clothes with the other.

You bridge the gap first.

“I liked it, Nav.”

You speak, but it doesn’t register that you’ve spoken until the actual meaning of the words hit me like the broad side of a barn. Then my brain catches up with itself and works it out that you are the one who said them.

“Excuse me?” I ask the question, but with the rock currently lodged in my throat, it comes out as more of a burp/hiccup.

“I liked it,” you repeat.

That’s when I notice you’re blushing slightly. Holy Reverend Daughter, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, is blushing.

You must think glaring at me with one of your patented bone witch scowls will help, but it absolutely does not help. It only makes it worse. So much worse, because now the redness has spread to your neck and shoulders. It’s everywhere, Harrow. I’ve never seen so much red on you, not even when you were bleeding out.

You must also think throwing a pillow at me will stop the shit-eating grin from forming on my face, but that also does not work. You just keep making it worse.

“Gideon, please!” you beg.

So, I please. I scoop you up into my big strong lap and lay a big fat one on your lips like we are the envy of the universe. That’s kind of my go-to response these days when confronted with new things about you. I once never thought you could be tender, or that you could be funny, and now I know that the Reverend Daughter can get a hard-on like everyone else.

Take that, Great Aunts.

We just sort of sit there in dumb silence for a while, trying to process what has transpired. Another new thing I discover is that holding you, stroking your back, and humming into your hair to deal with our issues is a far cry better for my health than getting railed by reanimated bones.

Your hair is getting so long, Harrow. Have I told you how good it looks when you tie it back, like you have been lately when we train? I’m about to tell you exactly that when you suddenly break the silence with another small “Griddle” muffled into my chest.

I read this description in a manuscript once, and it didn’t make much sense at the time. Lots of pictures, very few words. Not really your thing. But the way it describes the capacity of hearts is apt: mine grew three sizes in the span of a few seconds.

“What is it, night boss?” I chuckle. I have to try really hard not to slather you in kisses.

“This thing between us,” you start (your nervousness is palpable). “I don’t…for once in my life I’m out of my depth, Griddle. Do you understand how that makes me feel? In theory I know…the theory. I know how _relations_ work. The application. You are quite good at providing me feedback on that front.”

(“...Thanks?” I quip, but let you continue.)

“It’s the…response. The act of responding that I’m not…good at.”

I can tell that took a lot out of you to admit. The pause lengthens again, but then you add, “It’s new. It’s dreadful. It’s appealing. It’s tempting. But it doesn’t come as…naturally to me as it does to you. Am I making any sense?”

This time, you do meet my gaze, and it will never not be crazy as balls to see my delicious golden orbs in your sclera.

“Harrow, I have two decades of a head start learning what makes my body feel good,” I explain. “If you think for even a second that this bothers me, or that I’m not completely dedicated to figuring this out with you over the next myriad, you really are a screwy nunlette.”

You hesitate again. “But even if…?”

I do stop you this time, absorbing any further inquiries into my being through our face holes.

“Even if it takes a long time. Forever. We can do, or not do, whatever you want, for as long as you want. We quite literally have all the time in the world. In all the worlds, even.”

I’m still getting used to your smile. It used to be so foreign and creepy on your unpainted face, but Dad damn it, Harrow, even the smallest grin you give undoes me all over again.

“Okay?” I ask smugly.

“Okay,” you concede warmly.


End file.
